The Flash, Birds, and those &$!#@ Lines
07 February 2008
Roger
Trip log: 1300 nautical miles; This passage: 411.
We entered El Salvadoran waters just before dawn this morning. At 11pm last night, Tane had just begun his watch. There was no wind, the seas were glassy calm, we were motoring, and it was very dark. He was watching the light of a panga (a fisherman's dinghy) and had it on radar about a mile off, to port and slightly ahead. He went down to put the kettle on for a cup of tea when suddenly there was a squealing sound from the propeller---the dreaded sound of a long line caught up and being ground into the cutlass bearing. Everyone was instantly wide awake, and the motor shut off. The fishermen came up to us and tried to sort things out, but it was clear we had cut their line and we had a blue poly rope trailing behind with a plastic container float. After not convincing them at first that the line was cut (they apparently had miles of it continuing past us out to sea), they finally cut off the float and took off to find the rest of their gear. I went overboard with a light to try to clear the line. However, it was totally bound up into the bearing (there was poly line and monofilament nylon melted onto the shaft, a few stray hooks, etc.) and it was going to be impossible to clear it with one hand while holding a light in the other. We decided to wait until morning.
We took down the sails and drifted... at about 1 knot in the direction from which we'd come. By about 4am, the wind off the land started, the sails went up again, and we slowly regained our ground. The wind picked up enough to sail at 5 knots or more so we took advantage of it until it began to die. At that point, the sails came down and we drifted sideways as Tane and I started the process of clearing the propeller. The space on the shaft between the circular zinc and the cutlass bearing is so small, and the line so bound in there, it took us more than an hour to hack, slice, pick, pry, poke, and pull the line out. We started the motor and got back on course. We raised the main and spinnaker and we've been running on course at 5-6 knots with the now offshore breeze. We're closing on 50 miles from the entrance to the river at Barillas, at which point we call for a pilot and are guided 10 miles up the river to the anchorage.
We've had dolphins with us for a great deal of the time over the last few days. The latest ones are spotted. Normally they play around the bow, but this afternoon, a group of them spent most of their time around the stern, a behavior I've never seen before.
Yesterday we were visited by a flock of what looked like small shearwaters, dark brown/black on top and white underneath. First a few, then more and more, until there were over 30. We were beating to windward with jib and main, and the birds would gather in a flock and come zooming in along the windward rail. They would slow right down and hover along the rail slowly from stern to bow, riding the wind rising up that side of the boat. Every now and then one of them would hit the lifelines and end up on the deck. As they made each pass, they chirped and chattered loudly---for all the world like a group of children playing a game. They were clearly playing, and seemed to be daring each other to take more and more risks. We could stand at the rail and touch them in flight. One of them hit the lifeline, then caroomed through the forward hatch and into the vee berth. We chased it around inside the boat for a while and finally grabbed it in a towel and let it free.
We have been watching for the fabled tropical green flash as the sun sets. Yesterday and the day before, we saw it! Immediately after the sun disappears, it seems it rises again momentarily, but a glowing green. The flash is quite small--at least the ones we've seen are small. This evening, the conditions seemed exactly the same but there was no flash. We've watched about 20 sunsets and have seen the flash twice.
The water temperatures have been interesting. We started with 65 in Mazatlan, 68 at Isabela. It increased steadily until Zihuatanejo at 86. At Huatulco, much further south, it had dropped to 71. It's back up to 86 along the coast of El Salvador.